Slide 8
Slide 8 text
Explain the how
Values serve as the boundaries within which the organization will operate in pursuit of its vision. It is critical to distinguish between core values (those on which the organization will never compromise and is
willing to pay a price to uphold) and aspirational values (those that the organization espouses, but has yet to live up to in day-to-day operations). To be meaningful, values must be described in clear behavioral
terms.
For this initiative, we want as many perspectives from a representative group of the Node.js global community as we can muster. At Collaborators’ Summit October 2017, most of the participants were existing
collaborators, Board Directors, project leadership, and excited-to-contribute community members. After we talk about the practical steps of how we ran this instance of the workshop, we’ll talk about how we can
capture a wider range of input to get a high fidelity look at Node.js community values.
It is essential in running these types of workshops to encourage input from every single participant. In order to enable sharing, we have to minimize the criticism and maximize hearing big ideas. In design
thinking, this work gets called divergence and convergence.
Answer questions for instruction:
Lots of yes. No “no”ing. Encourage and embrace the ideas. Be honest. We diverge on big ideas and then converge on the patterns that emerge. Repeated ideas are okay! Tally these or write them down more
than once.
Next, we give the small tables 20 minutes to write down everything they can think of about values in Node.js. We heard so many questions. That’s exactly what should happen!(What IS a value? Can it be a
technical value? Is it supposed to be my personal value I think Node.js has or what I have observed? What if someone else already mentioned it?)
The answer to almost all of this is: “Talk through this with your table. Generally speaking, write it on a sticky note!”
Move up to a wall that is large enough to spread out the values(or use an online program like mural.ly), and instruct everyone to place them up on the wall. As more are placed, start grouping them by theme
and repeated words.
Don’t stack them. It is powerful to visualize how big a cluster of a value can be!
Step back, pause, and observe(oh and take pictures!).